SEOenthusiast

Yup, this is the third annual version of the 2011 Social Media Marketing Report, from the folks over at Social Media Examiner - and as usual, I’m pumped about the results! First, go and download the .pdf for yourownself and then dig in! 

I know that if you’re like me, you’ll find this report chock full of great items….on every type  and kind of question that one can think about. 

You can also watch the video of same too…ion that same page, eh…for a quick summary — but dont think that there aren’t a whole lot of other aspects to learn when you download the full report and read it in it’s entirety!

It will help you to  understand how marketers are using  social media, Social Media Examiner commissioned the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Social Media Examiner, set out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of  social media marketing with this report.

Here’s a list of some of the questions that they asked over 3300 marketers for their opinons on all things social media… 

 •  The top 10 social media questions marketers want answered
• How much time marketers invest with social media activities
• The top benefits of social media marketing and how time invested affects results
• The most used social media tools and services
• Marketers’ future social media plans
• Activities social media marketers are outsourcing

 

Is Social media is important for my business?

A significant 90% of marketers said that social media was important to their businesses. The self-employed (67%) and small business owners with 2 or more employees (66%) were more likely to strongly agree!

Want more, eh? Me too…and I found some very impressive stats on use of various social media outlets and that was changed, I noted since last year.

Commonly used social media tools?

 By a long shot, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs were the top four social media tools used by marketers, with Facebook leading the pack. All of the other social media tools paled in comparison to these top four.

It should be noted that in 2010, Twitter was in first place with 88% and Facebook was close behind with 87%. Since 2010, Twitter lost 4%, LinkedIn lost 7% and Facebook gained 5%. In our 2009 study, only 77% of businesses were using Facebook.

The self-employed (80%) and owners of small businesses (78%) were more likely to use LinkedIn. Larger businesses were more likely to use YouTube or other video and less likely to use blogs (68%+).

A close examination of which tools more experienced social media marketers are using compared to those just getting underway provides further insight.

More? Nope, not here…you need to go and get your own copy of same – it’s free and it’s got some very interesting stats and the conclusions made too, are also both surprising and newsworthy too!

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and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!

On the heels of last week’s article on Title Tag Optimization for SEO, I’d like to cover another important aspect to optimizing websites to place well in the SERPs – Meta Descriptions.

Meta tags in general have been a very controversial topic over the years in the SEO industry, and rightly so. In the early days of SEO, search engine optimizers and many webmasters used the Meta Keywords tag as a platform to stuff as many target keywords into a page as possible – whether they were relevant or not. Finding ways to game the system is a typical practice in the SEO industry, and this strategy actually worked for quite a while.

The problem is that people were abusing the use of this tag and many pages that shouldn’t have been ranking well were taking top positions for keywords they had no business showing up for. The quality of search results suffered, and search engines soon laid the smack down on these sites, knocking them from top positions in favor of websites that were of a higher quality.

And so – like the dinosaurs – the use of Meta Keywords as an effective SEO strategy has died out. However, it is another Meta tag that lives on and is (if used in conjunction with other SEO best practices) a very effective way to achieve better search engine rankings.

It is the Meta Description tag.

The Meta Description tag is typically a sentence or two of content which describes the content of a particular webpage. Search engines may consider or display this tag at their discretion. Relevant meta description tags often appear in search results as part of the page description below the page title.

Your Meta Description can be found between your webpage’s section. Here’s how a Meta Description typically looks for in a site’s source code:

As stated above, your webpage’s Meta Description may also show up in the search results:

Okay, now we know what and where you Meta Description is. Let’s discuss some strategies on how to compose it effectively for SEO.

The length of your Meta Descriptions is a very important matter. If you’re familiar with search results, you’ll notice that search engines typically only display so much of your webpage’s SERP description before it cuts them off with an ellipsis (…).

In addition, the length of the description being displayed can vary depending on the search query and the pages that are being served up.

Typically, for more general search queries (i.e. “car“), your site’s top-level pages will be the ones that show up in the SERPs. However, for search queries that are of the long-tailed variety (i.e. “2011 chrysler 200 red sedan columbus“)

Based on my research and experience, here are the average character space lengths that show up before the cutoff for search queries of the more general variety – typically bringing up top-level pages:

Google: As few as 136 characters, as many as 156 characters in length.Bing: As few as 135 characters, as many as 169 characters in length.

The average character space lengths that show up before the cutoff for search queries of the more long-tailed variety – typically bringing up your site’s deep-interior pages:

Google: As many as 299 characters in length.Bing: Did not show a noticeable expansion of SERP descriptions for long-tailed searches.

One thing that should be remembered with these expanded SERP results is that it is not necessarily just pulling the Meta Description, it is usually pulling together text from different sections on the page. Therefore, it may be mashing together as many as 3 different sources of information into the SERP description.

Why does that matter to you? You should stay conservative with the lengths of your Meta Descriptions on deep-interior pages. I’d say 175-225 characters spaces is good.

The expanded SERP descriptions are definitely not a license to blow out all deep-interior Meta Descriptions to 299 characters or beyond, but merely a reference point to show you that they could potentially be expanded a bit from how you write your top-level descriptions.

Note: The character space thresholds before cutoff are just what I’ve seen after thoroughly examining the SERP results. They may be subject to change as the search engines change how they display results.

The moral of the story is that you need to maximize the space available to you in the Meta Description tag – especially for top-level pages. Try to write complete thoughts and finish them around the cutoff points. If the description goes beyond, search engines will find an appropriate point to cut it off and what comes after that point probably won’t matter as much for your rankings.

Just as with title tags, this one should be a no-brainer. Use your target keywords in your Meta Descriptions. For example, if your website’s main purpose is to help you sell “Used Cars,” then you’re going to want to mention that in your Meta Description.

Before you do that, I recommend conducting extensive keyword research to determine which keywords are best for your site’s Meta Descriptions.

Search engines are in the business of displaying the most relevant results for any given search query. Relevancy is their main goal! This means that you’re going to have to ensure that the keywords you’re targeting in your site’s Meta Descriptions are highly relevant to the content on the page.

For example, let’s say you have an internal page on your site about “2011 Chrysler 200.” Which of the following Meta Descriptions would you consider to be more relevant?

Our dealership sells new and used cars. Find the latest new and used cars from our vast inventory of vehicles.

or

The 2011 Chrysler 200 mid-size sedan offers consumers exceptional craftsmanship, a refined driving experience, innovative technology, an abundance of standard safety features, and more. Test drive a 2011 Chrysler 200 today!

If you’re thinking like a search engine, then you’d probably guess that the second description is more relevant to the term “2011 Chrysler 200.” If all other things are equal, then you’d probably be right!

In addition, having Meta Descriptions that are highly correlated with on-page content is good for both usability and click-through rates. If a user is searching specifically for a 2011 Chrysler 200, then they’ll be more likely to click on a result with an enticing and relevant SERP description like in the 2nd example above.

If a website visitor land on a page that is about something different than what they were searching for, that could be a turn off which will lead to more bounces and poor user engagement/conversion.

Keywords at the beginning of a Meta Description tend to have more weight and ranking power than those at the end – or those that are past the cut-off point. Therefore, you should place your most important keywords towards the beginning of each Meta Description.

For example, if on your homepage you wish to target the keyword “new cars” as your most important target keyword and “used cars” as your 2nd most important keyword, then it might make sense to write a Meta Description similar to this:

Jake’s Auto Dealership sells new cars and used cars in Columbus, Ohio. Come in and test drive on of our new or pre-owned vehicles today!

If you’re really targeting the keyword “new cars” more so than anything else, then it would make less sense to write a description like this rather than the one above:

Jake’s Auto Dealership sells used cars in Columbus, Ohio. Come in and test drive on of our new cars or pre-owned vehicles today!

Just remember, the more important a keyword is, the closer it should be to the front of your Meta Description. But that’s they easy part. Writing an effective Meta Description can be much less black-and-white if you’re trying to target more than just two keywords.

While simply repeating keywords is probably easiest – it is not good for someone who might be reading the SERP description after performing a search query, and it is certainly not good for targeting multiple keywords in a non-spammy way.

There is no need to be repetitious in your keyword usage within the Meta Description tag. Mentioning the same keyword over and over again won’t help you rank any better. Instead, try to think of ways you can combine phrases and utilize a search engine’s natural ability to match phrases together so as to give you more room to target multiple relevant phrases in the Meta Description.

For example, if you’re trying to target both “new cars” and “used cars” in your Meta description, then you could write:

Another example, let’s say you want to rank for “car dealer columbus ohio”, “auto dealer dublin ohio,” “new cars columbus”, “new cars dublin”, “used cars columbus” and “used cars dublin.” In order to target all of those phrases in your Meta Description, you might write something like this:

Auto dealer selling new and used cars in Columbus and Dublin, Ohio.

A search engine can match all of the individual words together, allowing you to hit many keywords at once – all while saving the space you’d have used if you simply listed out the keywords in order. Finding opportunities to write sentences in ways that a search engine can match the keywords together can help you hit on many keywords all at once.

Note: Both examples were obviously shortened in order to make a point.

As with title tags, here’s where it gets tricky. Utilizing keyword combinations and matching is a great way to hit on multiple keywords at once while saving space. But I will flat out tell you that nothing beats a good old exact-match phrase in your Meta Description in terms of relevance.

For example, if somebody is searching for “new car,” a Meta Description that actually used the phrase “new car” should win out versus one where the keywords “new” and “car” aren’t right next to each other – if all things are equal.

The issue is keyword proximity. Keyword strings that appear closer together are better than having to rely on a search engine’s ability to match them together. Consider the following sentence…

The woman drove her car to the store to buy a new purse.

In a round-a-bout way, the above sentence could be considered somewhat relevant to the term “new car.” A search engine would loosely be able to distinguish this. But is it more relevant to the term “new car” than a sentence that says…

The woman drove her new car to the store to buy a purse.

I’d say the second one is more relevant to the term “new car” than the first, and that is where you have to strike a balance. It really comes down to just how focused do you want to be in terms of keyword targeting.

If you have a need to target multiple keywords on a page, then combination-matching is the way to go. However, if you have a page that has more of a singular keyword focus, then using an exact-match keyword is better for relevancy.

Each webpage on your site should have a Meta Description that is unique, different from other pages, and uniquely relevant to the content on that particular webpage.

Why does this matter? Google only displays a max of two results from one site in the SERPs. So having multiple pages with the same Meta Description may make it difficult for them to determine which one is more deserving of being ranked prominently. And thus, they may choose to rank none at all.

To go back to the reference I’ve used before about duplicate titles and meta tags, think of it like reading a book. If you’re skimming the table of contents and see that all the chapters have the same description, how will you be able to quickly jump to a highly-specific point in that book with any confidence in what that section is actually about? You won’t. You’ll just put it back down, and so will a search engine.

Duplicate Meta Descriptions can cause the appearance of duplicate content (even if on-page content is different and unique from page-to-page). This may cause some pages to get stuck under a search engine’s filters. Also, it tends to look like spamming, which is the opposite of what you want.

As I’ve said before, every webpage and every title has to be able to stand on its own two feet in terms of ranking in search engines. Its perfectly okay to have Meta Descriptions that are very similar and correlate with an overarching site theme, but having duplicates really hinders their individual ability to be highly relevant to the site’s on-page content, and thus for any search queries.

It is very important to remember that your site’s Meta Description tag serves the function of advertising copy. It’s main purpose is to draw readers to a website from the search results – making it very important to write it in such a way that it is highly readable (while still integrating target keywords) and compelling enough to draw a click.

Writing a highly-readable, compelling Meta Description that integrates important keywords can serve to draw a much higher click-through rate to a specific webpage.

Additional note: In order to maximize click-through rates on search engine result pages, you’ll need to remember that Google and other search engines bold keywords in the description when they match search queries. Using keywords that are relevant to search queries is a good way to stand out in the mess that is a SERP.

If you service a specific geo-area, then you’re absolutely going to need to mention it in your Meta Description in order to show up for a local search query such as “Car Dealer Columbus Ohio.” If you’d like to target more than one city that you service, then it may be worth mentioning both. I try not to go beyond 4-5 depending on length of city name.

Remember, search engines are very literal – meaning if you want to show up for something it should be mentioned on your page. So if you want to show up for “car dealer dublin ohio,” it will need to be somewhere on your site – unless you have a nice local listing built out. It probably should still be on there either way.

I’d recommend something like:

New and used car dealer selling sedans, SUVs, convertibles, and more. Serving Columbus, Dublin, Hilliard, Westerville, and Central Ohio.

Important note: Make sure that the use of a geo-term in the Meta Descripiton correlates with similar use within your site’s content or it won’t be as effective.

You should not be using any special symbols in your site’s Meta Descriptions. They aren’t helpful in terms of rankings and are simply a waste of space. I’d just stay away from them altogether when it comes to Meta Descriptions. Some special symbols include (©), (®), and (™).

Here is a full list of HTML Accent Entity codes that I refer to often.

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Anyhow, hope this helps you write better Meta Descriptions. I’m sure I didn’t quite cover everything as there is much that goes into it, but I tried to be as comprehensive as I could. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for additions to the article!

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To quote Bob Dylan:

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Indeed they are.

Effective April 4th, I’ll be changing employment to begin working as the Internet Marketing (something or other – not sure yet) at Germain. I’ve already put in my two weeks notice at People To My Site where I currently serve as the Director of SEO.

I just wanted to take some time to announce it here and assure my readers (all 200+) that I’ll be continuing my blog. This has been the primary reason for my inactivity lately. I’ve decided to take this precaution to avoid the mass panic and hysteria that I’m sure would follow the dissolution of the Agent SEO blog and brand!

Everyone can sleep well at night knowing that I’ll continue to plug away here with quality SEO tips and occasional rants. I wouldn’t normally take these types of precautions, but my following is so die-hard that I didn’t want anyone to lose their minds and go off the deep end. So there that is. Just kidding by the way (like anyone would lose sleep over this little thing).

The real purpose of this post is to take an opportunity to thank People To My Site. Without them, I would have never been able to cut out my little slice of the world (i.e. my blog) or gain the amazing professional experience that their company allowed. In my 3 years with the company, I’ve had the great pleasure of working with awesome clients and even better people – not to mention the cool perk of being able to bring my dog “Rocky” to work every day for the last 1.5 years!

I’ll definitely miss and reminisce about some of the best moments including Christmas Karaoke, “Grilled Cheese Wednesday” Softball, Pot Lucks, Dog Parties, NCAA Tourney Pools, and just shooting the shit with good people.

As an organization they supported my blog and the development of my personal brand, and even supported much greater causes like helping me in my efforts to donate warm winter clothing to needy school children this past Winter! I am ever grateful.

The people at PTMS are all top-notch, and I consider them all to be my friends! So, thank you….

Jen Ridenour, Jason Walker, Guy Jacks, Ben Clarke, Brendin & Jessica King, Zack Singer, Mike Wright, Jared McKinley, Drew Krebs, Andy Anaya, Mike Ashcraft, Terrence Tuy, Sean Hill, Karin Oliver Kreft, Scott Sharkey, Bob Masters, Larry Blagg, and of course my right-hand man Aaron Flax (also a groomsman in my wedding)!

I’m really going to miss working with all of you guys, and the chance to bring my dog to work!

And to those employees that have moved on to other opportunities but who I became great friends with, thank you…

Steve White, Nate Riggs, Cheryl Harrison, Robby Herbst, Gabriel Escamilla, Arlette Garay, Chris Wright, Monica Leck, Sara Kear, Hedy Asal, Josh Boles, Josh “Butters” Wilson, Chris Johnson, Dave Schirtzinger, Dan Weatherby, and I’m sure there are a few more!

(I hope I spelled all last names right, and I tried to link to all who had Twitter handles)

If your name was mentioned above – it is because you are awesome! To anyone looking to connect with great people, I’d recommend getting to know each and every one of them as they are all high-quality!

As for my new opportunity, I must admit I’m very excited and very nervous.

My excitement comes from chance I’ll have to continue to do SEO, while getting the opportunity to also do Social Media, Web & Graphic Design (my true passions), and more.

My nervousness comes from a general fear of change, up to and including missing my friends (and hoping the PTMS continues to do well after I leave), missing bringing my dog to work, and the change in the every day reality that has been my life for the last three years.

Whatever the outcome, it WILL be a shock to my system initially as is the case with any big change or transition.

Do I think I’ll do great work at my new job? Hell yes. Am I sad to leave the awesome people I work with now? Hell yes. Will the change to my every day reality take time to get used to? I’m sure it will.

Most importantly, will I be happy? I think yes

I’ve heard that they say in order for a door to open, another must close. This is absolutely true, but it sure can leave an empty feeling when you do close some doors. Here’s hoping that everyone does well, and that we see each other often. Although the paths of our journeys are now changing, they’ll be sure to cross again some day.

Okay enough with the mushy philosophical stuff!

Check back soon for some good-old SEO awesomeness!!!

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For a blog about SEO, its been quite a while since I’ve written a post about the topic of Search Engine Optimization. Well, that’s about to change. Over my next few posts we’re going to be hitting proper SEO techniques hard!

We’ll be starting with a comprehensive guide to optimizing your site’s title tags. Writing good title tags is one of the most important aspects of SEO, and is the backbone of any solid Search Engine Optimization program. But before we get into tactics involved with writing good title tags, lets first identify where it is on your site and where it will show up in search engines.

The title tag is the text that appears on your browser’s title bar. A title is required in every HTML and XHTML document.

You can find your title tag in your site’s source code:

You can find your title in your site’s browser window:

See your title in your the search results:

Okay, now we know what and where you title is. Let’s get on to tips on how to compose it effectively for SEO.

Okay, here comes a baseball reference. Think of your homepage as your clean-up hitter and your site’s internal pages as the rest of the lineup. Your cleanup hitter (i.e. homepage) should be the page that gives you the most production and should have the most power. Your site’s internal pages should be built in support of your homepage, should act as a supplement to your homepage’s optimization efforts, should get into far more detail about your site, but should be able to stand on their own two feet in terms of ranking abilities.

Your homepage typically wields the most ranking power and should be used to target the most top-level generalized keywords. Your site’s internal pages typically wield less power (especially the deeper they are in the site), but can be much more targeted in terms of keyword focus and conversion opportunities (i.e. long-tailed keywords).

The length of your title tags is a very important matter. If you’re familiar with search results, you’ll notice that search engines typically only display so much of your webpage’s title before it cuts them off with an ellipsis (…).

Based on my research and experience, here are the average character space lengths allowed in titles before the cutoff, along with the max length I’ve seen:

Google: average if 66 character spaces, max of 70Bing: average if 65 character spaces, max of 71

What I’ve see is that if your title tag is over 70 characters, the search engines will find an appropriate place to cut it off. If it’s right at around 70, then they’ll typically allow the full title to show.

The moral of the story is that you need to maximize the space available to you in the title tag – for now that’s about the first 65-70 character spaces. This means that you should try to focus on only 2-3 keyword phrases per page as that is probably all you’ll be able to fit within reason.

Stay away from title tags that are too short (shorter than 50 character spaces) as those waste valuable space, and try to stay away from writing titles that are too long (anything over 80 is too long) as there is a diminishing return after the title gets cut off – not to mention that nobody typically reads after the cutoff point and it might look like spam to a search engine (if you use it to stuff keywords).

This one is a no-brainer. Use your target keywords in your title tag. For example, if your website’s main purpose is to sell an “Apple,” then you’re going to want to mention that in your title tags.

Before doing that, you’ll need to conduct extensive keyword research to determine which keywords are best for your site.

Search engines are all about relevance – meaning they are in the business of displaying the most relevant results for any given search query. In order to meet that criteria, you’re going to have to ensure that the keywords that you’re using in your site’s title tags are relevant to the content on the page.

For example, let’s say you have an internal page on your site about “D’Arcy Spice Apples.” Which of the following title tags would you consider to be more relevant?

or

D’Arcy Spice Applies – Yellowish-Green Apples – Agent SEO

If you’re thinking like a search engine, then you’d probably guess that the second title is more relevant to the term “D’Arcy Spice Apples.” You’d be right!

In addition, having title tags that are highly correlated with on-page content is good for both usability and click-through rates. If a user is searching specifically for D’Arcy Spice Apples, then they’ll be more likely to click on a title that says as much. Also, if they’re looking for D’Arcy Spice Apples and they land on a page that is about something different, that could be a turn off which will lead to more bounces and poor user engagement/conversion.

Keywords at the front of a title tag tend to have more weight and ranking power than those at the back of a title tag – or those that are past the cut-off point. Therefore, you should place your most important keywords should be at the beginning of the title.

For example, if on your homepage you wish to target the keyword “green apples” as your most important target keyword and “red apples” as your 2nd most important keyword, then it might make sense to write a title similar to this:

Green Apples – Red Apples – Agent SEO

If you’re really targeting the keyword “Green Apples,” then it wouldn’t make sense to write a title like this:

Red Apples – Agent SEO – Green Apples

Pretty self explanatory. But this is the easy part. You’ll see that there are far more dynamics that go into writing an effective title tag out than just listing keywords in order of importance. Please remember, its about maximizing the space!

While simply repeating keywords over and over again may have worked with SEO 2004, that is simply not necessary today. There is no need to be repetitious in your keyword usage within the title tag. Instead, try to think of ways you can combine phrases so as to give you more room to add other relevant phrases to the title tag.

For example, this keyword phrase is 25 character spaces long:

This one is only 18 character spaces long:

That’s a difference of 7 character spaces, and you’ve still targeted both keywords. I know 7 may not seem like a lot, but when you only have 70 to work with every little bit counts. Remember, search engines are smart so they can match and map keywords together to determine relevance. Use that to your advantage in order to maximize your space.

Okay, here’s where it gets tricky. I will flat out tell you that nothing beats a good old exact-match phrase in your title tag in terms of relevance. For example, if somebody is searching for “Green Apples, ” a title tag that says “Green Apples” should win out of one that says “Green & Red Apples” if all things are equal.

The issue is keyword proximity. Keyword strings that appear closer together are better than having to rely on a search engine’s ability to match them together. Consider the following sentence…

The boy jumped over the red fence carrying an apple.

In a round-a-bout way, the above sentence could be considered somewhat relevant to the term red apple. A search engine would loosly be able to distinguish this. But is it more relevant to the term “Red Apple” than a sentence that says…

I think not.

The issue here that you must find is balance. If you only want to target the keywords “Green Apple” and “Red Apple” then writing a title tag like the one below makes more sense:

Green Apple – Red Apple – Agent SEO

However, if you have a need to target more keywords, then you’ll need to work in combinations rather than exact-match phrases by necessity.

Green & Red Apples – Planting Orchards – Agent SEO

Hopefully that helped demystify the issue a bit.

I have a couple of opinions on brand names.

Brand names help create trust. Therefore, it is important to use them in your site’s title tags. For example, Nike’s click-through rate is probably a bit higher than that of a blog talking about Nike shoes simply due to the brand trust factor alone.However, unless your brand has a very important keyword in it, put it at the end of all title tags. Remember, important keywords need to go towards the front of all title tags, so putting your brand name at the front of every tag inadvertently steals weight from your target keywords.

Your title tags for ever webpage should be unique and different. Why? Well, since Google only displays a max of two results from one site in the SERPs, then having multiple pages with the same title may make it difficult for them to determine which one is more deserving of being ranked. In this case, they may choose to rank none at all.

Think of it like reading a book. If you’re skimming the table of contents and see that all the chapters have the same name, how will you be able to quickly jump to a highly-specific point in that book with any confidence? You won’t. You’ll just put it back down, and so will a search engine.

Duplicate title tags can cause the appearance of duplicate content, which may cause some pages to get stuck under a search engine’s filters – which is the opposite of what you want. This can be done by accident, negligence, or on purpose. Either way, its something that should be corrected.

Every webpage and every title has to be able to stand on its own two feet in terms of ranking in search engines. Its perfectly okay to have title tags that are very similar, but having duplicates really hinders their individual ability to be highly relevant to the site’s on-page content, and thus for any search queries.

“Stop-Words” are words that are extremely common (pronouns, prepositions, etc) that most search engines skip over in order to save disk space, or to speed up indexing. They have no inherent value to a search engine.

Some of the stop-words: a, about, an, as, are, but, be, or, and, and there are many others.

Try to avoid using them if at all possible. The best example I can think of was a client a while back whose homepage title started with, “The official website of the…”. This was pretty bad, and a tremendous waste of space in terms of optimization of target keywords.

This one is up to you. I’d say using dashes (-), the (&) symbol is okay. Hell, I even use plus signs in my titles (thinking about changing that). However, I’d stay away from using other symbols that may just serve to waste space such as the (©), (®), or (™) symbol.

Here is a full list of HTML Accent Entity codes that I refer to often.

If you service a specific geo-area, then you’re probably going to need to mention it in your title tag in order to show up for a local search query such as “Green Apples Columbus Ohio.” I’d recommend something like:

Green Apples – Columbus OH – Agent SEO

Important note: Make sure that the use of a geo-term correlates with similar use within your site’s content or it won’t be as effective.

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Anyhow, hope this helps you write better title tags. Let me know if you have any questions!

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Over the years,  I’ve been a staunch follower of the simple understanding that for Google et al to “read” your website HTML pages, it needs to find them. The HTML, that is…it must be totally findable, searchable, readable and indexable. And there’s the “rub” when it comes to those beautifully designed Flash sites, eh….

And my own thinking, based on actual trial and error testing, appears to be vetted by many many other SEO practitioners on the web…folks whose thoughts and blogs and counsel I follow religiously. Most of us think and agree, that using Flash is a serious mistake in the SEO ranking world. It adds too too many obstacles to what should be a solid process and it makes you use work-arounds to get anything done. It’s time time time and that as you all know by now, is that costs dollars and that is why we take on no new clients who insist on a full Flash site. Oh, eye-candy navigation is fine…we SEO around that, but a single HTML page holidng a monolithic Flash .swf? Nope…not for us!

On point, here’s a link to a recent post on her blog, by Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com, a noted SEO practitioner from Massachusetts that she also sent out on her blog too (here’s a link for the signup) and she noted as I’ve always done too, that Flash is a non-starter!

And she tested for same, using real-world methodology. She went and found keyphrases in the Flash content of a test Flash website page, plugged same into Google and searched….and almost all were not found. The couple that were, used both the Meta description tag or had those keywords placed below the Flash embed itself to try to help. And Jills comment here is very apropos –

“While that’s a good alternative, the info they had was very different from the info contained in their Flash. That’s a bit of a dangerous game to play with the search engines, if you ask me. If that info is good enough for search engines and iPhones, why isn’t it good enough for your most important users?”

You should go and read that piece, and see what else she tested for, what the results were too…all solid counsel from a great SEO practitioner, eh!

My Canadian SEO disclaimer: we have only 1 client (a graphic designer shop) who uses a full Flash site, ie not just for some eye-candy navigation, but for the whole site. And so far how are they doing? Well like most designers, the look and feel is beautiful….but like most Flash folks it was built in one monolithic Flash file that sat on 1 single HTML page…..ie very very bad SEO!

But they listened and then reworked all of their 25+ pages by breaking them all down into single HTML pages, that we can use for seperate title tags, H1's, image alt’s, H2's, keyword placements, footer tags, outbound links…etc. etc. They listened, as I said, and they’re slowly climbing their rankings in this region….it’s still Flash, yes….but indexing is happening and link building too….it’s all about work-arounds and time time time…sigh….but yes, they are ranking in spite of Flash, and not because of it, eh!

So, Flash and SEO? Is this a marriage that we seek? Nope, not even a little….your mileage of course may vary, but if you want SEO serps, you need to get indexed to rank….and until Flash is transparent to googlebots, it’s not happening here!

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Today we’ve got a guest post from a good friend of mine, Dr. Erika Pryor. Erika and I met a couple months ago through Twitter and our respective blogs, and have since become fast friends. I’ve had the pleasure of guest hosting on her radio show, and now I’m trying to return the favor (although a guest post isn’t nearly as cool as radio).

Erika is an Independent Digital Communication consultant who works with a variety of business professionals and small businesses on digital identity, social media, blogging, content development and more. She blogs at “Erika Pryor At Large.” She is also host and content director of Internet radio show, Digital 411 — heard exclusively on TalktainmentRadio.com, recorded live 10am EST, Saturday mornings. It’s a “soft tech” radio show exploring what’s happening on the social web from the user’s perspective.

And now, I give up the floor to Erika…

—

I’m pretty stoked to be guest posting on the Agent SEO blog. Since I know enough to be dangerous when it comes to SEO — but I’m lethal when it comes to the social media side of things I couldn’t resist the opportunity to share my love of social media with Jake’s readers. So, thanks Jake for the invite. (And I figured you wouldn’t mind having one less blog article to think about while starting your new “suit and tie” gig!)

So, let’s get to it. Why opinion blogging has to be more than just attitude on paper? I’m not sure what lingo you prefer, opinion or personality bloggers, but whichever they are I don’t much care for them — that is until recently. In a rare admission I declare here that I was a bit of a blogger snob. (This won’t surprise people who actually know me IRL!) I still am. I’m typically interested in reading blogs to learn something new, and frequently the content I found on personality blogger sties was a little contrived. I felt as though they were just spitting out some attitude on paper to incite throngs of readers to react in disparate opposition to one another.

BORING!

I mean really, isn’t that what traditional media already does? As bloggers — we have to continue to be a little outside the mainstream in order to keep mainstream media on their toes. Right? We’ll I wasn’t exactly sure.

So, like a good blogger, I experimented with on my platform. I wrote a few pieces relatively close together less on the informative side, and more on the sharp opinion side. Here are some of the titles to titillate you “Now we’re concerned about mediocrity: My response to Why Rebecca Black is Every one’s Fault,” and “Why Face time is essential to your niche community.” As the top rated posts on my blog during the month of March, I realized why opinion bloggers are making inroads with readers.

First, the ones that are doing well are doing so because they are honest. For example, a personality blogger that did help change my opinion on things. Sarah Storer of The Naked Red Head. She’s all about some honesty. What I appreciate about her work is that she’s brutally honest. She has this whole theory of soul puking which you have to check out. None the less, opinion can function well when it’s an authentic or honest take on something.

Next, I think personality blogging can really work well to expand the voice of a blog. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been writing on the same topics for a while and have gotten a little bored. In thinking about how to expand the range of topics I write about with alienating my readers, I’ve found some success with including more sharp opinion pieces. This can be a way to expand your topic family without going off the deep end.

Finally, to be a good personality blogger, you need to have more than one platform. Okay, this might seem a little strange, but consider each social media and traditional media channel has it’s own personality with audiences that have expectations. This is really another great way to expand your audience and reach because you’re revealing different aspects of your personality and using the medium to help shape that growth. That seems like a pretty smart way to operate.

So, what do you think about personality bloggers? Any good or horrific sites you’d like to share?

—

Thanks for the post Erika! It came at a time of great need, with my wedding coming up, school, job change, etc. However, the job is going well so far, although I may never be able to get used to the suit and tie.

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Today we’re going to get a little personal as I’ve been apt to do lately and talk about a few things that can often be tough subjects – especially in a work environment.

I recently finished my first week at my new job, and let me tell you it has been everything I expected – fun, challenging, and a bit eye-opening in many regards. As the new Internet Marketing Director at Germain of Columbus, I’ve had to make some fundamental changes to how I go about my day.

These would include shifting my mindset from just SEO or Social Media to working on a holistic marketing approach that evaluates every angle, going from being the vendor to managing them, and – my least favorite change – wearing a suit and tie to work. But hey, it comes with the territory.

The reason I talk about these changes is just this – I am a long way from where I was personally and professionally about 6 years ago. This post will by no means be to toot my own horn. Rather, it will be more about the power of believing in yourself, knowing your value, overcoming adversity and naysayers, and showing what a little elbow-grease can do.

So time to tell my story…

Six years ago, I had just quit the worst job of my life as a Part-Time Supervisor at UPS and was working 7 days a week at Staples and Petland to pay the bills. I dropped out of Ohio State University while at UPS as I couldn’t afford to finance the large out-of-pocket tuition payments that Financial Aid and UPS’ tuition reimbursement programs didn’t cover.

I had ZERO experience in anything related to marketing except my few graphic design programs at OSU. I repeat, ZERO experience! If you’d told me six years ago that I’d be doing anything of importance, I’m not sure if I’d have believed it. My outlook on life was very bleak.

There we two month stretches where I didn’t have but 1 day off of work. I honestly hated life and felt I’d been dealt a really shitty hand. I felt so out of control of my own destiny.

And then, things changed. Fate intervened. At the time, I couldn’t have known it but I was about to be introduced to a person who has had a bigger impact on my life than just about anyone else – save for my fiance (although he had a part in that too).

Who is that person? The well-known Eric Leslie (aka @BeOnScene).

Eric just happened to be dating the best friend of my ex-girlfriend. Luckily, that friend had talked to Eric about my background in graphic design and he was able to work his connections to get me a job at his company, the now-defunkt Cornerstone Local Marketing Services.

When I started at that company, there were two sides to the business. One side was a pure call center, and the other side – which Eric managed – did internet marketing. At first, I was put in the call center.

I was super-appreciative that Eric had given me the opportunity to get out of my 7-day a week hell, but I’ll be the first to say that talking on phones (and making cold calls) is not my forte. In fact, I even made a few calls where I got too flustered and hung up on the person I was calling. Imagine that, a cold caller that hangs up on you?!?

At the moment that I was surely on the brink of being fired for being a horrible telecommunications rep, Eric was kind enough to move me onto his team and take me under his wing a bit. And then, he effectively enabled me to kick the door down and begin to unlock the keys to what I didn’t know then would be my career path.

At first, I did cold-calls (yet again) to try to get people to sign up for Yahoo listings, but then I graduated into being allowed to to utilize my graphic design experience to tinker with people’s sites.

An the somewhere, it happened. From humble beginnings, I began my career as a web designer – tinkering with logos and graphics on people’s websites! Here was the problem. I had no idea how to design websites?!? I had always been a graphic designer, never a web designer.

In addition, I also had little experience with design software at the time – as most of my design courses at OSU were beginner courses. I had a HUGE learning curve.

So there was my fork in the road. I had a decision to make. I was given a great opportunity to take my graphic design skills and try to translate those into web design skills for a company that at the time barely sold websites.

What did I do? I bought a book. Where did I start? On the Blogger platform if you can believe it. The first design software I ever semi-used? Adobe Fireworks.

From there, I dedicated all waking hours to learning how to become a web designer – from learning that first bit of HTML code all the way to creating really (what I thought were) good-looking websites.

This part of my life involved little sleep, and many nights of being up till 4AM and going to work at 8AM for very little pay. It was quite a struggle to say the least. It was an amazing time and – slowly but surely – I was able to overcome that huge learning curve (although I’ll always have much more to learn).

But little did I know the real work was just beginning.

Being an unproven commodity is quite a thing to get your head around. Besides the part where you have to prove your worth, you will always start out as the only one who believes in yourself. Nobody else will.

There were literally times when I would get my paycheck, add up my bills, and realize that even if I spent $0 I’d still be in the red.

Sometimes it made me want to quit, made me question if I was going down the right path or not. Was it worth it in the long-run?

What I Will Say About Adversity:

Are there people out there who have faced or face more adversity than me? Of course. However, what I will say is that overcoming adversity is hard. If it were easy, then everyone would be skipping around with happy lives, happy jobs, and nobody would ever have any problems.

But we know that isn’t the real world. The real world is tough and unforgiving. If you want to succeed you have to do a couple things, work hard and work smart.

In my life, I’ve run myself into the ground working hard, but where I finally started to catch breaks was when I started to work smart. Sometimes people are lucky, and I have been lucky in many regards – meeting Eric for example at just the right time in my life. However, I wouldn’t rely on luck as it will only take you so far. Work smart and you’ll get opportunities to prove your worth eventually.

I’ve been told I don’t believe in myself enough. That is NOT true. There are many ways to believe in yourself and show confidence – and not all of them involve pounding your chest in front of everyone.

Believing in yourself comes from deep within. It is that feeling that gives you knots, that spurns you on to try harder, to learn more, to keep picking yourself up by your bootstraps when you fall.

And so, as we progressed at Cornerstone Marketing Services our team developed to and we were able to launch a retail marketing and web design initiative called Your Marketing Corner in Columbus and Orlando. The team in Columbus (where most of the work came through) was led my Eric, and included myself along with Aaron Flax.

As we were churning out websites for clients here in the U.S. and even in Latin America, we began to notice one thing. They sites we were building – although pretty – were not doing so well in the search engines.

And – much like my start in web design – I saw my opportunity to begin learning Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So how do you learn SEO? Well, I’ll say it isn’t like design. I couldn’t go and get a degree, or learn too much from books.

How I learned SEO was by obsessively reading blogs and forums about it by industry leaders. It is for that reason that I try to pay it forward to this day. I owe those SEO bloggers my career – even if they don’t know it.

What drove me? Besides my own internal desire to be better, there was one statement from a manager (not Eric or Aaron) that really stuck in my crawl. I was told:

If you’re going to be a designer, be a designer. If you’re going to be an SEO, be an SEO. Most people can’t do both.

I thought that was bullshit then, and I do now! Although it is true that most people with those competencies compartmentalize and don’t branch out, I have a strong belief that the two go hand-in-hand.

In fact, from then on I completely understood who I was, what my value was, and where I had to go (see below).

What I Will Say About Believing in Yourself:

If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will. It starts with you! Now this isn’t to say that you have to be all “rah-rah” cheerleader-glass-half-full all the time, but you have to have the internal confidence that believes in you even when nobody else does (and that may happen).

This can be a struggle, and sometimes you may feel quite alone. But when you finally succeed, it is totally worth it!

When somebody cracks that door, kick that f@$#ing thing down!!! Opportunities don’t come very often, so when they do you have to take advantage.

For me, the crack started when I was given an opportunity by Steve White, Jen Ridenour, and Julie Brown to join People To My Site in 2008 as a full-time SEO analyst.

It was kind of cool to change from being full-time web designer/part-time SEO to full-time SEO/part-time web designer – although I may never be rid of my true passion for design.

From there, I’ve started this blog (which was one of the best things I’ve ever done), was promoted to SEO Director at PTMS, and then 3 years later was lucky enough to land the position I’m currently in as Internet Marketing Director at Germain of Columbus.

It’s crazy! I went from mopping floors, stocking shelves, and selling pets to designing websites and having a great – and probably career-defining – job in such a short time span.

I’ve barely had time to catch my breath and realize how much my life has changed for the better.

What I Will Say About Kicking the Door Down:

If someone gives you a chance and you’re smart enough to recognize the opportunity, then work your ass off the exceed their expectations at every turn. If you can continue to exceed expectations, other opportunities will come, and other doors can then be kicked down.

Half the battle is knowing when you have a good opportunity versus when you have a great opportunity. Again, this is where working smart helps. Don’t always take the first opportunity that comes along, take the BEST opportunity that comes along (referencing when looking for jobs). And don’t put money as the number one factor. It helps, but it isn’t always what makes you happiest!

As I referenced above, it is very important to know your value – even if nobody else does. For me, it was being a combination web designer/SEO/blogger/social media punk. That combination of skill sets is what makes me different.

For you, it could be something else. The key is knowing what makes you unique and different from everyone else, knowing what type of value can then be associated with that difference, and getting others to realize it too! This may not be easy, but never let people get you down and tell you you’re not with what you think you’re worth.

In fact, when somebody tries to knock you down a peg, take it as a challenge to prove them wrong. If you think you’re worth 40k, 50k, or more – or think you deserve to be treated with more respect, prove it.

If you can prove it, then there will be somebody out there who will see that value and give you a chance. Either that, or you’ll realize that what you’re worth isn’t something that can be measured by money or respect. In that case, you may choose to go on your own.

To each his own.

—

To my readers: Sorry that this post got long-winded, but I had a lot that I wanted to get off my chest. It’s not to blow my own horn or anything, but just to tell the story of how I got to be where I am.

It is my hope that there is somebody now who might be in the situation I was six years ago who might benefit by knowing if they can work hard and smart, that there is a chance they can be both professionally successful and happy in the not-so-distant future.

The moral of the story is sort of cliche: You can do anything you set your mind to if you work hard, work smart, know & believe in yourself, know your true value, and take advantage of opportunities when they come.

Hey, it happened to me! I have a great job, a beautiful fiancé, I’m back in school, and I’m very happy for one of the rare times in my life! And it all happened despite the fact that I was totally down and out six years ago. What a difference some time and hard work makes.

P.S. Sorry for the creepy picture and bushy eyebrows. I took it myself.

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We live and breathe, SEO. We run reports daily, sometimes twice a day and when Google makes changes like so many times last year, we run them three or four times daily. We compare and contrast what we find in the rankings and then hypothesize as to the “why” the Google algo handled our client’s sites and in what manner we can learn from same. SEO is our life, and for that we of course, like to use the absolutely top-notch BEST tools out there.

So for serp ranking reports, one must somehow find them all, test them all and then decide which “works” for your business best….which is exactly what we did 6 months ago. We were using at that time WebPositionGold4…which we’d tested and had been using for over 5 years. We liked WP4 and it’s methodology of handling all of the variables that such serp ranking software finds issues with and we were very very sad to learn that the owners of same, decided to deprecate the stand-alone desktop version in favour of an online version. We hate online apps, and that’s even more prevalent IMHO when it comes to ranking a clients SEO Campaign. WP4 worked perfectly for us on the desktop – we ran reports, dozens of same weekly on over two dozen client campaingns and only once or twice in the 5 years we used that software, were there ever any issues with that process….and the WP4 support team provided updates for those items within days.

But as I said, the WP4 folks stopped the app from being updated and all of us desktop users were out of luck. I would offer that I did attempt to buy the app from them…oh, it would’a stretched our cash-flow out dramatically I’m sure, but they were not interested in selling same. So, as of last fall, I was “out” of SEO ranking software. And the search began in earnest to find a replacement.

Google searches of course, led me to a short list of what seemed to be the major serp software, desktop versions only mind you, that were out there, and I worked my way through my short list carefully…and what I was interested in was ONLY ranking software desktop apps….I didn’t want to at that point, even think about as suite of SEO apps, just the one that would show me and my clients how their sites were ranking. This also shortened the list down to the following top three contenders…

As you can see, from what must be thousands of these apps out there, I knew enough to check with other SEO peers, and had lots of anecdotal evidence and forums and boards to go and learn what others thought of same to be able to get to the highest rated serp ranking apps out there.

And I tested, after downloading and installing their trial versions, I did what anyone else might do, I used three of my own sites to test for the full serp ranking functionality of each of these three apps. And I was surprised….almost at once…at the speed that only one offered right outta the box. RankTracker kicked ass!

I ran over 300 keywords for one site and the report was done and I was looking at it – i.e. it completed then used those serps to create the report in under 4 minutes. Done. I was looking at thoses rankings in less time than what my older software used to “initialize…” and that was a real eye opener, eh! My older WP4 software took 21 minutes to run that same set….so I was a happy canuck camper for that simple speed increase! The other contenders were still warming up when RankTracker was done. Score 1 for RankTracker, eh!

Okay, so it was much much quicker than the other two apps….but were the rankings true…after all, that’s why you buy an SEO serp ranking app, eh?

Did it report what a simple Bing or Google search would show – with all the various filters and screenings turned off…ie to give complete default rankings? And answer is – yes! Well, a caution here….things don’t “always” work that way anymore, in that what I might find to be a ranking in my hometown might differ from what someone in Las Vegas or Boston or Seattle might find…that’s a fact we’ve learned. But here locally, I can say that after testing I believe almost 100 keywords one by one by one by one….sigh….RankTracker had one variation only, by 3 positions on the second page….it showed the keyword phrase to be #14 and a manual search showed it to be #11….so I’m more than happy with that level of reliable true rankings. I also of course, tested the other two apps, and found that both were about the same, they both reported only 3 or 4 errors against what I’d manually tested….so while they were also very good, score 2 for RankTracker.

So, speed? Check! True rankings? Check…but what else did that app offer, you might wonder?

Things I’d not much ever thought about reared up quickly. I could simply use HTML to change the look/feel of the reports I wanted to generate. Scheduling reports? Yes, RankTracker allowed me to setup complete scheduling for various clients and their ranking reports to be done. Competitor tracking? Yes, RankTracker allows me to track a client against their top 10 competitors. KEI for keywords and phrases? Yes, RankTracker features that too. Human emulation for search engine timing issues? Yup, once again RankTracker offered up this workaround to solve CAPTCHA issues with the search engines too. FTP of reports/files/folders up to client sites for their review? Yup, RankTracker does that too…and that made the overall score in favour of RankTracker, eh!

Is it any wonder then that I chose this app?

 The other two on my list did some/most of those items that I needed but not all, only RankTracker fitted our needs. So I did what any other SEO practitioner would do, I bought the Enterprise version of same, and it’s been running here daily ever since.

You just can’t beat quality, eh….and RankTracker is just that. A quality SEO ranking desktop based software application!

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Okay, you’re thinking who’n heck is this “Outbrain” group and why should I pay any attention at all…which is perhaps a valid query in today’s harried and hurried times. But this one is very interesting, folks…and let me explain why, eh!

Outbrain is found here…and their About Us page says the following –

“We all love how Netflix recommends movies and how Amazon gives us great recommendations for books we would enjoy reading right? Here at Outbrain, we are doing the same for blog and article content on the web. Information overload is real and growing as the amount of content on the web grows exponentially. We are committed to helping readers of blogs and media sites find the best content that is most relevant to them on a personal basis…”

What I guess they mean is that they help sites to monetize the great content found on that site, thru a variety of means and allow your website visitors to get to your great content while using sponsored links to monetize that great content. Seems like a model that has existed online for a bit, but that’s not what this blog post is about — instead, I wanted to point out the release of the new Outbrain Content Discovery trends report that you can find here…

Basically, what they did was they used their own archived data of more than 100 million sessions to distill down some very intersting stats to see  how readers are accessing content, where they’re finding it and how they’re engaging with that content. And the results are in, eh and somewhat surprising….

While search still reigns supreme in terms of directing traffic to content pages (41% of external referrers), social is gaining share at 11%.Of the six content verticals examined, stories in the news, entertainment and lifestyle categories are the most likely to receive traffic from social sources.Traffic coming from social media sources has the highest tendency to bounce.

But there’s more, eh!

Very interestingly I noted that currently, search methods (including Google, AOL Search, Bing, Yahoo and Ask) send the largest slice of referral traffic to content. Links from publisher sites make up 31% of referral traffic to content pages, portal homepages (AOL.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com) account for 17% of traffic, and finally, social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Fark.com, reddit, Digg) send 11% of traffic to content pages.

Download the report itself here if you’d like and then DO pay attention to the explanation of the above piechart….it has some very interesting numbers there that help to rationalize IMHO, the whole SEO Campaign strategy….and the coming-on-strong social media blitz too!

And my conclusions after a solid read of this report are yes, very similar to their own…”though traditional methods like search still reign supreme, we’re keeping a close eye on new trends such as social sharing and the increasing openness of content sites to link freely to one another…”

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Well, keeping up with Google is a real chore at times and a new, just launched program entitled “Google +1? has entered the online social mileu in the last few days. And what do I think? Ummm…well, here’s the skinny on this attempt by Google to try to IMHO, institute a new “social” indicator into their web results.

First, do go to that link and look over the video that explains what it is Google is attempting to “do” by instituting such a new method for those of us who wish to “review” a site, can do so. When you’re done that, come on back….

Back? Okay, so, what’d you learn? Did you hear the comment that “when you click +1, you’re telling your friends etc, that this is something you should check out!” In other words, you’re reviewing the link and offering up a postive review…least that’s how I read this….it’s a method for Google to collect reviews for web result links.

Here’s a quick sceenshot of what I see when I’m “in” the test program and have made a search…i.e. the new +1 button is now there — click to enlarge…

Here’s a quick screenshot of what I get (after enrolling in this test and making a click or two) here — click to enlarge…

Okay, so what you ask? Yes I do see the new bluish +1 buttons there on the far left hand side of the web results URLs…and I note that below it says “You +1'd this”…but so? IMHO, the addition of this is a “nice try” for Google, but I also think that there are already folks out there trying to “game” this new social ranking tool and that’s a worry always. I’ll wait and see, of course…but will be watching carefully, eh….as should all SMBs out there!

Well, let’s go a step further shall we? Google says this about this new program…”we will record information about your +1 activity in order to provide you and other users with a better experience on Google services…”

Oh, by the way, this whole area, i.e. the +1 reviews is all controlled by your own Google Profile area…here’s my own for instance for you to see what I’ve setup and your own will be similar of course…you can not keep those reviews a secret either, as the program is totally open to the web results searcher. Anything you therefore review by clicking on the +1 icon in a web results page WILL be indexed by Google and WILL be available for all others to see if that URL comes up again in a later search.

So, your comments are open for all to see….which, if you think about it, is a good thing, eh! Which gets me back to my point here….which is

So….think about using this…it’s an attempt as I said for Google to “move” into the social stratosphere…and from my own tinkering with same over the past couple of days, it’s interesting to say the least!

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Hey all….we’ve been so wrapped up in various client matters that this morning I’d just like to catch up with many great items out there in the SEO world!

To begin, yes, Google has made a change in their own branded online review process which “used” to be the Google HotPot….but no longer, eh!

First, we pointed out this move by Google back last fall, here…and then reviewed same specifically on HotPot here…and then commented more on how Yelp was handling this foray into review/ratings here…

Official news on this change, whereby Google is “rolling” the HotPot process “into” Google Places can be found here…and they go on to say this –

“Rolling Hotpot into Google Places helps simplify the connection between the places that are rated and reviewed and the more than 50 million places that already have an online presence through Google Places—places that millions of people search for and find every day on Google…”

As you will be able to make the same “use” of the old HotPot process but now via the Google Places page, it’s really (so far at least) not that much of a change, but one that other SEO types have commented on too…Greg Sterling here and Mike Blumenthal here….and thanks to both for pointing out some real-world numbers and stats too, eh!

Majestic has a new item too, that is very much worth mention in this SEO roundup….and that’s the rollout of their brand new Site Explorer dashboard!

If you’re a Majestic user when it comes to using the biggest set of site stats around, then you’d already know that while the information is a MAJOR factor in planning SEO tactics, the format has always been somewhat “thick.” What I mean is that every time I’d login to see the latest Site Explorer stats, I’d have to work and work at assembling the data in a way that was of value to me and my clients. That’s gone now, as they’ve launched a new dashboard that makes the Majestic Site Explorer so much easier to fathom…and I’m a happy camper too on that update! Just watch the video and you’ll see what I mean! Well done Majestic!

The folks over at e-Marketer, have compliled a new 2011 Canada Retail ECommerce Forecast that has some surprising numbers and you’d be wise to pop over to that Exec Summary page to take a good read, eh!

It appears that our online e-commerce spending will double in the next 4 years to over $30 billion!

“Retail ecommerce in Canada is late blooming compared with the US. But over the next few years, it will start to realize its potential. In 2010, consumers in Canada spent CAD16.5 billion ($16.0 billion) on domestic and foreign sites for products and services (including travel). By 2015, online spending will nearly double, reaching CAD30.9 billion ($30.0 billion)…”

The Summary goes on to further inform about what we Canucks “buy” and also shows that aggressive US retailers are coming to Canada for new e-commerce opportunitys….I suppose they somehow “missed” the Zappos abandonment of Canada…but I sure didn’t! But it does appear that all the sources for this Forecast are the web’s top ones, eh…ie Forrester, Aegis, StatCan. Has made me think about e-commerce again and how we might talk to some of our retail clients about new opportunities within that channel, eh!

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Today we’re going to talk about blog comments and why they’re an effective tool for engaging blog readers and developing relationships. A couple of months back, I decided to shift from using WordPress’ native system to manage my blogs comments to a 3rd-party system.

For me, there were several of reasons:

Spam: The 3rd-party systems have often proved to be better at combating spam comments.Integration: It integrates seamlessly with your WordPress site’s design (and on other platforms too). As a web designer, I enjoy getting my hands dirty with coding, but WordPress’ native comment template can get a bit tricky when you’re designing for nested comments, author comments, etc. So, I decided to take a load off and let a 3rd-party system handle it.Helps Foster Discussion: WordPress comments when left untouched do nothing in the way of getting blog commenters to come back after you’ve replied to their comment (you need a plugin for that). However, these 3rd-party blog comment systems help you foster good conversations, discussions, and interactions right on your blog. Rather than having to opt-in, most users are sent an email when the author replies (or can manage it in their own accounts).Managing All Comments: What I love about blog comment systems is that it gives you the ability to manage comments and interactions on your blog, but also gives you the ability to manage and review comments you’ve left on other blogs, as well as see responses left for you by that blog’s author. Now that’s convenience!Easy Blog Integration: Typically, these commenting systems integrate into the blog fairly easily. As a WordPress user, it was especially helpful that they came with plugins. Basically what happens is the commenting system will attach and skin itself over top of wherever your have installed your comments template on your WordPress single post page (or any other page). This is very easy and convenient!

I’m sure there are more benefits, but those are the ones that have struck me as incredibly positive. So without further adieu, here are the best blog comment systems according to me…

DISQUS is my top pick and is the preferred comments platform here on the Agent SEO blog. You can see it in action below. There are several things that I like about it and a few things that I don’t.

The good:

Flexible options for management of comments, comment moderation, comments template appearance, and access control.Great notification system that lets authors know when a comment is left, and also lets a commenter know when the author has responded to their comment via email. This keeps the conversation going.Easy ability to import and export new & old WordPress comments.My personal favorite: Integration with social media and the display of reactions and trackbacks in the comments (see below). This helps me know who is sharing my blog post on Twitter, etc. and is especially useful if they forget to include my username (which means I wouldn’t see it in my mentions feed on Twitter).The community profiles feature allows you to moderate comments on your blog and manage your own comments and interactions on other blogs all in one basic dashboard.Very good at combating spam, and also gives you the ability to whitelist or blacklist certain users, as well as word filtering.

The bad:

When I originally installed it, it blew up and rendered invalid any scripts outside of the comments template having to do with comment count – for instance the counts underneath post titles or next to popular posts. After much digging, I found that hey have a script that you have to install to correct this comment count issue – it then shows comments and reactions. However, if you’re not familiar with code, then this will be a huge issue.

All in all, my experience with DISQUS has been good and I would recommend it to anyone as my blog comment system of choice. Here is the link to the WordPress DISQUS Comment System plugin.

Intense Debate is another blog comment system that I’ve had experience with. It is very similar to DISQUS and has some good features and some bad features. It was originally my comment system of choice until I decided to switch to DISQUS.

The good:

I actually preferred Intense Debate’s design over that of DISQUS. That’s my inner designer speaking and is very subjective, so take it for what it’s worth.Intense Debate also has a very good email notification system.It does a good job of combating spam and gives you a lot of options for comment moderation and management.I like their idea of ‘Reputation Points’ and ‘Comment Voting’ which helps your blog’s commenters build up their reputation by submitting quality comments.They do have some social media integration, although I don’t quite think it is to the level of DISQUS’ product.It was fairly easy to import & export old WordPress comments.

The bad:

When I originally started using Intense Debate, it did an odd thing. It installed some sort of page reload script that caused my webpage to reload itself about every 30 seconds. This was not good for usability, and their customer service team was unable to help me figure out why that was happening. I’m sure that bug has been worked out, but it wasn’t when I made the switch.I liked the social media integration including reactions on DISQUS much more than those on Intense Debate.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think Intense Debate is a fantastic blog comments platform. However, I still think DISQUS has a bit more to offer in terms of functionality, management, ease-of-integration, and social media characteristics. Here is the link to the The IntenseDebate WordPress Plugin.

Here are a few blog comment systems that I’ve seen and heard good things about but haven’t tried out for myself.

LiveFyre is another real-time blog comments system similar to DISQUS and Intense Debate. Although I haven’t personally used it, from what I’ve seen it is probably most similar to Intense Debate in terms of functionality.

You can see it live in action on Lewis Howes’ blog.

You can learn how to install on your WordPress blog by following the instructions on LiveFyre’s Quick Install page. Just a note, there are some features of this system that are free and some that are paid.

The old commenting system SezWho has since been taken over by Echo, who has repurposed their commenting system and released it to the public under the Echo Commenting name.

From what I can tell, it definitely looks a lot more slick in terms of functionality and design that the old SezWho blog comment system. However, I haven’t tried it out so I wouldn’t know. You can see it live on the Washington Post’s website.

All-in-all it looks like a solid system, although I won’t go as far as to put my stamp of approval on it just yet. Also, it doesn’t appear to be free.

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So now I’d like to ask you to share your thoughts on the above blog comment systems, tell me your likes and dislikes of each, and even introduce a blog comment system that I haven’t listed here. Thanks and have a great day!

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Today’s article is a guest post from Kevin Lenton. Kevin works with companies to build and maintain their online relationships with clients, as well as prepare content geared at high conversion rates. In his spare time he enjoys playing the harmonica – an activity he’s been involved in since the age of 12.

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Most are well aware of the power and benefits of installing Google Analytics to find out who is coming to a website. Many are even aware that you can see exactly what keywords are being searched for to find that website. There are not many out there however, who are aware of the fact that you can use that data to skyrocket your traffic numbers.

If you follow the steps in this guide, you will see a significant traffic boost. The beauty of this strategy is that it is often limitless (depending on how big the market is for any given website). This is also a strategy that works no matter how much traffic you are currently getting. The only requirement is that your website is getting some sort of traffic from search engines. It works best if you are getting 35+ visitors per day via search engines. The more traffic you currently get, the easier this technique will be to implement.

There are dozens of different options for bringing a website live these days. If you are serious about your website/blog and increasing the traffic, you have to prepare for achieving that goal. If you are on a low grade hosting plan, be aware of the consequences associated with going that route. You do not need anything extreme, but a simple plan from a good web hosting provider will suffice. That way, you do not have to worry about your site going down or some sort of security issue arising. The traffic is not going to skyrocket over night, but it is better to switch hosting servers when your site is getting less traffic versus more. There is always that risk of a small downtime when you change servers.

The idea behind this strategy, is that you will be analyzing your current traffic data, to figure out new pages that should be added to your website and/or blog. There is a lot that can be seen from looking into this data. Sure, it is nice to be able to see the keywords that people are searching for and how many visitors you are getting each day, but what good does that do if you are not utilizing the data you are looking at? Depending on the traffic level of your website, there may be dozens (or even thousands) of keyword phrases that are bringing traffic to your website. Many of these are long-tail keyword phrases.

Taking a look at the list of keywords in question, along with where you currently place for those keywords, will allow you to further target them. If you are ranking fairly well for many of these keywords on accident, imagine what you could do if you actually tried to rank for those same keywords?

The theory behind this strategy is simple. Your job is to find keyword phrases that you already rank for (on accident) that bring you traffic. The key is to find phrases for which you rank below #1. If you are already ranking #1 for the keyword, then there is no point in taking this strategy.

The first thing you must do is login to your Google Analytics account and access your keyword data.

Find your way to the dashboard of the website for which you are attempting this strategy.Click on Traffic Sources on the left hand side of the page.This will expand and give you more options. Click on Keywords.On the bottom right hand corner, you will see an option that says Show Rows. Choose the option to show 500 rows.

You should now have a large list of keyword phrases from which to choose. From there, you can scan through and see what keywords are bringing traffic to your website. Additionally, you will be able to see how many visitors have come from each specific keyword phrase. You want to find a keyword phrase that looks like it is bringing in a few visitors and also was not something you were targeting on purpose.

As an example, notice above a list of keywords from a website. The keyword that was chosen was olay return policy.

This keyword brought decent traffic as is.This keyword was not something targeted to rank for.The current ranking is not #1 (it is #5).We do not have a current page revolving around this keyword.

Notice above, that the circled result is where we are currently ranking. Also notice that the page really has nothing to do with olay return policy. If we build a page all about olay return policy, we could easily rank #1 for this keyword phrase.

In the example, the page that currently ranks is an Oil of Olay Skin Care Review page. An option would be to build an additional page added on to this review called Oil of Olay Return Policy. Optimize the page around the keyword phrase olay return policy, and it should rank #1 fairly easy. This is what could be called a low hanging fruit.

According to available click distribution data, there is a significant difference between the 1st and 5th listed ranking results on Google. While approximately 45.46% searchers click on the 1st result when searching for something in Google, only 5.00% click on the 5th result. While this is just a study based on a lot of different variables, and there are far too many involved to get an accurate number, there is still going to be a lot more action from the first result versus the fifth.

In theory, if you were to go off the above study, then olay return policy could yield approximately 73-75 visitors per month if our page ranked #1 instead of #5, where it currently brings in 8 visitors per month. It is likely that the number would be much lower, however there would still be a significant increase in traffic. The numbers above would tell us that traffic could potentially increase more then 900%, at least in traffic from that specific keyword. If you were to rinse and repeat this process with 10 keywords in total, all similar to the example described above, then the numbers would quickly add up.

It is not possible to calculate an exact rate of traffic by analyzing your current traffic. In the example, the percentage of clicks may perhaps be significantly higher than normal, because the results listed above #5 are all irrelevant and do not give the user what they are looking for. They may even notice that right away within the results, and skip straight down to #5. Who knows what the variables could be with your website, but they are worth looking at. Really take your time with your keyword data to figure out the perfect keywords to target.

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A big thanks goes out to Kevin for writing a fantastic guest post!

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